WALK INTO
ART: TWO ARTISTS IMMERSE YOU IN THE ARTWORK ITSELF AT THE 18TH STREET ARTS
CENTER (Santa Monica, CA)

Korean
artist Han Sungpil and Los Angeles based artist Yvette Gellis intend to suck
you into the seascape as they take over 18th Street Arts Center.

Los
Angeles, CA - January 7, 2011 - Colors, suggestions, and spaces collide when
two artists from opposite sides of the world expand a building into a
collection of color strokes and liquid imagery--transforming architecture into
an experience of being enfolded by the artwork, where the opening of doors
topples dynamic, dramatic color and painterly lines into the subtle tints of
seafoam shades and the vast presence of the natural world.

The entire
front of the world-renowned 18th Street Arts Center, where Yvette Gellis is in
residence, will be wrapped with monumental imagery created from the combined
works of two masters of artistic space. Han SungpilÕs oceanscapes
simultaneously envelop the viewer and reinforce oneÕs aloneness in the immensity
of the universe, using devices of scale, chroma and texture to evoke a sense of
the sublime. Gellis then deploys her uncanny talent for melting two dimensions
into three, using pictorial cues, extant objects and a theatrical, abstracted
presence on the canvas, transforming two dimensions into a jolting, delightful
sense of depth and theatrical structure.

The end
result is the unmistakable feeling of being enfolded, invited with a flourish
into the artwork itself--a hybrid of SungpilÕs classical, ascetic invocations
of open space and the weight of a minimalistic and impassive, vast ocean, and
GellisÕs flowing, growing, expressive brushstrokes. Imagery of doors, opening
into the sea, incorporate a sense of the surrounding environment at 18th Street
and transport the viewer--and the gallery itself--into a new world.

Call it a
spectacle, call it magical, delightful, experiential, playful,
transformative--however you choose to experience it, you can be sure it will be
just that: an experience of art, rather than just a Òlooking atÓ of art.
Except when you get pulled into Sungpil and GellisÕs ocean, you wonÕt have to
hold your breath.